A history of IP violence: how SOPA’s and PIPA’s sponsors have waged war on the Internet

Representatives Lamar Smith and John Conyers and Senator Patrick Leahy are …

Three members of Congress have played an outsized role in the advancement of copyright protection legislation over the past few years: Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT), Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX), and Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D-MI). And while the tech industry has certainly attempted to sway them with campaign support, the media industry has been even more generous in response to their efforts on behalf of big content.

The two chief sponsors of the Stop Online Piracy Act, Smith and John Conyers Jr., are long-time fixtures on the House Judiciary Committee. Smith is chairman of that committee, and Conyers (the committee's ranking Democrat) held the chairmanship from 2006 until Smith assumed it in 2011. Leahy, the author of the "Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property Act of 2011" (PROTECT IP Act, or PIPA) serves as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and is the second-most senior member of the Senate. Among them, the three have played a role in every piece of major intellectual property legislation for the past decade. While they've hardly been alone in their efforts on behalf of content creators, they've certainly been on point for them.

Conyers has the longest track record, and was one of the 9 cosponsors of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act in 1997. In 2008, then-chairman Conyers was the House sponsor behind the Prioritizing Resources and Organization for Intellectual Property (PRO-IP) Act of 2008, a bill that raised the penalties for sharing files of copyrighted materials—and was cosponsored by Smith. That bill was passed during the RIAA's civil suit campaign against file-sharers, and was introduced just after the trial of Jammie Thomas-Rasset, a Minnesota mother who was fined $220,000—and in a later trial, that fine was raised to $1.92 million, or $80,000 per song. PRO-IP created the Intellectual Property Enforcement Division at the Department of Justice, and established coordination between agencies, including Homeland Security's Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) on crackdown efforts.

Smith was a cosponsor of the failed 2010 Internet Investment, Innovation, and Competition Preservation Act, an effort to block the FCC from enacting any "net neutrality" regulations.

Leahy has sponsored or cosponsored a number of efforts over the past five years to create greater intellectual property enforcement. The Intellectual Property Rights Enforcement Act of 2007, introduced in the House by Rep. Brad Sherman (D-CA) and by Leahy in the Senate, would have created an Intellectual Property Enforcement Network to coordinate US and overseas intellectual property enforcement task forces. And Leahy also sponsored SOPA's predecessor, the Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act (COICA), in 2010—which was shot down before a vote by Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon.

There's good reason for their interest in protecting the interests of big content companies—big campaign donations. Leahy has received $371,806 in individual and political action committee contributions from the television, motion picture, and recording industries since 2007—Time Warner has written him $62,150 in checks alone, according to Open Secrets. Smith is a favorite contribution target of the television and cable industry, his top source of campaign contributions over the last two years, accounting for nearly 10 percent of his campaign warchest donations—$133,050 from 2009 to 2011. That's two times what computer and Internet companies contributed over that term. In the run-up to his reelection campaign this year, TV, music, and film companies have contributed another $88,800 to Smith through individual and political action committee contributions, with Clear Channel (Smith's biggest benefactor) leading the way at $23,000 total so far this election cycle.

Conyers is also a darling of the media industry, with $84,000 in contributions from 2009 to 2010, and $21,000 so far toward his pending re-election campaign. The recording industry especially likes Conyers, having given him $135,000 over the course of his career in direct campaign contributions through individual and PAC donations. Right after the PRO-IP Act of 2008 passed, Disney, Time Warner, Sony, and Viacom wrote him checks (as did Yahoo, Amazon, eBay, and Google), according to MapLight.

Sean Gallagher / Sean is Ars Technica's IT Editor. A former Navy officer, systems administrator, and network systems integrator with 20 years of IT journalism experience, he lives and works in Baltimore, Maryland.